Recipe: Tuna Niçoise Salad

With our beautiful weather at the moment it’s too hot for normal dinners. I’ve never been great for salads but I wanted to try something new and healthy that hopefully the whole family would like.

I turned to my old friend Google to search for tuna Niçoise and the top hit was BBC good food. I used their recipe but tweaked it to make it more child friendly and to suit my store cupboard contents and garden vegetables.

I dumbed it down for 21 month old – he got the boiled egg, potato, green beans and tuna and what didn’t end up on table and deck was lapped up. My 4 year old ate every morsel bar the lettuce, which is a good result for such a grown up dinner.

Whisk the oil, red wine vinegar, parley, chives, garlic, salt and pepper together, I put them all together in a clean jar, put the lid on and shook it to mix.

To Make Salad:

Put the lettuce leaves in a bowl and add the tomatoes, potatoes, tuna and beans. Drizzle over the dressing and then add the eggs, olives if using and shredded basil leaves.

Time saving tip: We eat dinner in the evening times and as we were heading out for the afternoon I boiled the potatoes and the eggs at lunchtime and left to cool. At dinner time everything was ready to just prepare the salad in ten minutes.